The Cameroon National Football Team and national unity (1972-2017)

Pages: 656-660
Japhet A. Anafak (Department of History, University of Yaounde I, Yaoundé, Cameroon Searcher, MMC, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium)

This article on the Cameroon National Football Team and national unity, focuses on moments in which governments used the national football team results to consolidate national cohesion. Three great moments are referred in this article. First the Africa Cup of Nations from 1972 to 1988 that emerged in the context of instituting the United Republic of Cameroon (1972) and that of 1984 instituting the Republic of Cameroon. Then the 1990s and 1994 context of the World Cup claims and aspirations to democracy and finally the African football of Nations in 2017 in a context of the Anglophone Nationalists claims. It theoretically brings sociological debates on football as a social and political phenomenon. This article shows that football is not only a social fact, but also has political and economic dispensations to Cameroon.